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Hi Chill, The second approach does seem better to me too , as it would be easier to maintain in the future.

I have the basic building blocks for this now. I have a script that calls 'pigs' as required, and I've found out how to check whether that script file exists so that I can call it if the official 7" display isn't found.

The 'Display Off' screensaver now works, and the changes should not interfere with the way it works with the official display. I've started adapting the 'piCorePlayer' applet's implementation of the brightness control, but I've discovered a few extra things that the script needs to do, such as returning the maximum brightness setting. These should all be possible with this Pirate Audio board, but even if they weren't, the script could 'fake' them if necessary.
Eventually I'll have a full list of what such a script needs to do, so that similar scripts can be written for other displays, assuming that a command line utility can be used to control them.

There are a couple of other difficulties with the brightness control:
1) The help text is a bit too long to fit on this tiny screen, so I'll need to experiment with the font.
2) The control uses the volume keys to adjust the brightness (which is ok), but it uses the 'home' key to exit, and I don't currently have a 'home' key defined. I'll have to lose one of the other functions in order to define 'home' on one of the buttons.

I cut down the help text a bit so that it all fits. I'm struggling to find where the font size is defined for the label across the top - it doesn't quite fit when the backlight setting uses 3 digits (i.e. 100).

I need to replicate the changes for the 'backlight when off' setting, and then tidy it up for Ralphy's approval . And it could do with checking on an official display, to make sure I haven't messed anything up!

... Do you see a chance for this kind of LCDs to dimm or switch of the backlight? ...

Some Waveshare displays have a switch for switching the backlight on and off, others control the brightness of the backlight as described in this manual: link.
But the cheap China clones offer no way to control the backlight.

2) The control uses the volume keys to adjust the brightness (which is ok), but it uses the 'home' key to exit, and I don't currently have a 'home' key defined. I'll have to lose one of the other functions in order to define 'home' on one of the buttons.

Try replacing your KEY_LEFT mapping with KEY_ESC. That will allow you to exit the screen brightness scroller as well and still allow back navigation in the menus and popups.

The square aspect ratio does lend itself to using album art as wallpaper. I'm still searching for the perfect cover (not too cluttered, so that the the text shows up clearly), but I rather like this one